Matt Prior
I am trying to enjoy music in cars more, after exposure to some experts and high-end audio systems – and because two friends recently told me how much they think the car is a great place in which to listen.
I’m trying, but I’ve never bought the idea. Not because I believe cars’ audio systems aren’t top-notch. They are. On a recent trip to drive the Ferrari Purosangue, some engineers from Burmester – which provides its audio system – came along, and there was no doubting its impressiveness.
The Harman Kardon system in my Volkswagen Multivan long-termer is, to my ears, even better – as good as I’ve heard in a car. But as much as the system, I’m sure that’s down to the environment.
The advantage that car audio has over home entertainment is that its developers know where you’re seated, probably to within millimetres, so they can place speakers and tune them to suit. You’re not going anywhere.
But, said Burmester’s engineers, the interior matters too. It’s harder to produce quality audio in a small coupé than, say, a four-seat saloon. To an extent, the greater the space for letting sound develop, the better. The large Multivan, with its particular blend of reflective glass and absorbent surfaces, seems particularly good, giving the feel of an auditorium, but it’s still at its best just as I park outside my house and turn the engine off.
And there’s my problem and why I would rather listen to things at home on a theoretically inferior device: even the quietest cars make noise.
I write from the back of a stationary BMW i7 and have a sound meter with me. Right now, on a breezy day, it’s showing a decibel (dBA) level hovering in the low-30s. My house is a little quieter.
Even the quietest car – the Rolls-Royce Phantom is as good as it gets – makes 60dBA at a motorway cruise. In most cars, that number is approaching the 70dBA range, and sound grows on a logarithmic scale, so 20dBA sound is 10 times more intense than 10dBA and 100dBA is a billion times more powerful than 10dBA.
America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that city traffic can send in
